Americae Retectio

In the late 1580s, nearly a century after the travels of Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci, Jan van der Straet (also known in Italian as Giovanni Stradano and in Latin Johannes Stradanus) designed a series of engravings celebrating the Italian contribution to the discovery of the New World (the Americas), known as Americae Retectio (The Discovery of America).

Van der Straet sent the designs to Antwerp to be engraved by Adrian Collaert either in 1589 or no later than the following year.

Philip Galle subsequently re-issued the series in 1592 to commemorate the anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s discovery of the New World (the Americas).

The series consists of a title-page and three separate engravings, arranged chronologically, depicting Columbus, Vespucci, and Ferdinand Magellan, aboard their ships and surrounded by mythological gods, sea nymphs, mermaids, sea monsters, and other wonders of the ocean.

It is bound together in this single volume, with Nova reperta (New Inventions) (#209).